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Want to Play: a MegaGame

File this one under things I Desperately Wanted to Finish
and Post a Week Ago. It’s come up a couple of times in the past few entries, so
you guys might be aware that for the past few months I’ve been dealing with a
decidedly un-fun set of health issues. I won’t bore you guys with the details,
but symptoms and path to recovery have done a number on me, so the otherwise
ordinary task of drafting up a post ends up taking far longer than it used to.

But no medical malady was about to keep me from
participating in my very first Megagame.

Sort of. One thing is for sure: the name is especially apt.
Take one part model UN, one part LARP, and one part board game on steroids.
Blend in the company of 30-50 new friends over the course of six or so hours
and you end up with a Megagame.

That sounds amazing, if maybe a little intense. What’s it
like to play?

Short answer: awesome, if also delightfully exhausting.

The longer answer could probably do with a little setting
of the proverbial stage.Megagames are the brainchild of a
group of British friendswho
have been coming up with the large scale playable scenarios since the early
80s. Scenarios, which comprise both the fundamental rules and the core
narrative of the game, can vary significantly in terms of the subject matter
covered and the roles made available to individual players.

Whether the thematic narrative involves clashing Celtic
tribes or scheming Renaissance era Italian barons the basic mechanics remain
largely the same. Players are assigned a role, each with specific abilities and
functions, and are usually tasked with leveraging those to the benefit of
whatever team or faction they are placed in. Some players are given access to
and control of one or more colossal board game-ish setups, which usually
represent combat and/or tactical interactions with the forces of other
factions. A combination of interactions in those giant board games and skillful
roleplaying will yield a winner, though winning seems to be less a concern than
just performing well and producing memorable experiences.

Our theme was ‘Watch
the Skies’, a scenario in which teams of five or six players would
represent current nations in the lead up to and fallout from humanity’s first
point of contact with extraterrestrials. Each ‘country’ had a leader, a
vice-presidential type role, a science officer, a military commander, a
representative to the UN, and a utility role. Players could also be placed with
the invading/visiting aliens or take on the role of a member of the media
attempting to report on the historic events as they unfolded.

If you guessed that last one was the role that I got to
play, you’d be correct. While it wasn’t too much of a stretch to play a
fact-hungry blogger, taking control of theGlobal Technology Journalgave me a unique vantage to see just
how a Megagame worked while still being an active participant. The rules for
the media were surprisingly robust and added an interesting dynamic to the game
as a whole. Not only did the media players have to try to keep up with, and
provide accurate citations for, the sometimes chaotic happenings around us, but
we had to do so before any of our media brethren could land the scoop
themselves. Balancing the need for timeliness with the accuracy (while
simultaneously trying to curry favor with the individual countries) was
definitely challenging and made the game go by in a flash. There were precious
few moments of downtime and, in all honesty, there was enough content within
the media role that it could easily have been split between two people.

Aliens have landed!

The other players seemed like they had similarly engaging
tasks. Both the science and military officers spent the majority of the day
perched over their respective game boards. The board gaming aspect seemed like
some of the tactical turn-based combat fromXCOM(for the military players) and the
tech tree progression you might see in theCivilizationgames. You can see variants of these
in action inthis
Shut Up & Sit Down video. Officers controlled individual units with
unique abilities and had to respond to various challenges and confrontations,
which themselves varied from round-to-round.

Wait, back up a second. What’s this about rounds?

The game itself is played in up to five or six rounds,
exactly how many of these depends on how quickly the players progress through
their given objectives or how much of the narrative they uncover. For sovereign
nations, each round requires the management and deployment of a finite number
of resources (team members being one such resource, but financial capital being
the most significant factor). Representatives must be sent to the UN where, as
you might guess, all formal diplomacy takes place. Scientists and military
officers are deployed to their respective game boards to carry out agreed upon
plans and the almighty budgets must be balanced. Money becomes especially
precious in the later rounds, which allowed for several underhanded and
interesting mechanics *cough cough* bribery *cough*. Where once well-cited
stories were tough to come by there was a sudden deluge of state secrets at our
media disposal…for a price.

Our particular game moved along at a slower pace; we
reached only the end of round four. Despite this, those four rounds packed in a
lot of action. Aliens landed, other unspeakable horrors were conjured,
alliances were forged and shattered, backs were stabbed, and various Earthly
entities were abducted into extraterrestrial custody. Our gamemasters (or game
weavers as they’re termed in a Megagame) revealed the ‘winners’ along with a
breakdown of what was actually going on, including various storylines that we
didn’t have a chance to play out.

There were a few bumps during the course of play, but that
was to be expected given that this was the first full Megagame run through for
our game weavers, and these were generally minor (e.g. a few roles needed
additional clarification). The layout of the space where our game took place
also presented a few challenges, but those certainly didn’t detract from the
overall experience.

LARPers, former debate teamers, model UN veterans, or just
fans of human psychology/team dynamics/problem solving will enjoy Megagames.
You’ll definitely have the chance to untangle some thorny situations, so make
sure that diplomacy skill is maxed out (and maybe deception too, if you’ve got
the build points). Snacks and the caffeine source of your liking will also come
in handy, especially after hour 3 or so. It’s definitely a unique gaming
experience that’s worth sampling.